GATA consultant Robert K. Landis, partner with Reg Howe in Golden Sextant Advisers, has come into possession of what purport to be the minutes of a recent meeting of the U.S. Treasury Department's Exchange Stabilization Fund. Whether the minutes are genuine or not, they explain everything about U.S. monetary policy. You can find them under the headline "Purloined Minutes" at the Golden Sextant home page here:

GoldSeek has posted tonight's "Midas" commentary by GATA Chairman Bill Murphy at his proprietary Internet site, LeMetropoleCafe.com. Tonight's "Midas" is headlined "Moral Hazard" and it has some fascinating comments from an anonymous observer to the effect that the primary purpose of the Counterparty Risk Management Group, the fraternity of big New York banks and investment houses, is to rig markets -- or, rather, to stamp out free markets or prevent free markets from developing -- and quite with the approval of the U.S. government. Of course this is exactly what GATA has been saying for years, if not necessarily as well.

BEIJING -- Premier Wen Jiabao said on Tuesday that China's foreign exchange reserves hoard had grown too fast, bloating money supply, but that the country was taking measures to make better use of its forex stockpile.

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazil's real weakened today on expectations the central bank will step up dollar purchases to rein in the currency's rally.

The central bank, which has been buying the U.S. currency on a daily basis for two months, bought dollars yesterday in an auction for 2.1295 reals each. Still, the real, which closed at a four-month high yesterday, is expected to keep strengthening in coming weeks on optimism dollar flows from investments and exports will stay strong, said Questus Patrimonio's Octavio Vaz.

Edgar J. Steele, a lawyer in Idaho who is proprietor of ConspiracyPenPal.com, has written an essay just posted at GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, offering some interesting speculations about Goldcorp's bid for Glamis Gold and Goldcorp's own risk of becoming a target for Barrick Gold.

Essentially Steele argues that, in acquiring Glamis at a premium price, Goldcorp is striving to make itself too big and unattractive to distract Barrick from its predation of NovaGold.